Monday, 27 January 2014

As reported earlier, Denmark will hold a referendum to decide their participation in the unified patent court and unitary patent.

The decision is important for many reasons. Of course, Denmark would provide one more signature under the agreement, towards the goal of 13. So participation of Denmark makes the unitary patent more likely for all of us. More importantly, although Denmark may be one of the smaller EU countries it is nevertheless an important economy of the EU, the 11th in size. I consider part of the value of the future unitary patent to be its completeness. The ability to secure Europe with comparatively little overhead is definitely one of it selling point. It is already a pity that some countries are not joining, e.g., Spain, Poland, and Italy.

Moreover, there have been plans to create one large regional divisional of the unified patent court (UPC), that would serve the entire Nordic region. Such a Nordic court could take infringement and revocation decision in first instance for Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and the Baltic states. If Denmark were to drop out, that would make this prospect much less appealing.

Having a single court that can decide on patent matters for most countries, instead of having expensive fragmented decisions, or the prospect of a more valuable European patent apparently appeals to the Danish population as well; According to a recent poll, the population of Denmark would vote in favor of joining the unitary patent. If the referendum were held today, and not on May 25, 56% would vote in favor of the unitary patent. I'll keep my fingers crossed until then.

Monday, 6 January 2014

The Dutch government has published their autumn report on reducing 'regulatory burden'. The report includes an annexcontaining the steps taken to reach the goal €2.5 billion worth of reduction. Among the 45 pages (!) listing many many measures, I was pleased to find one labeled 'Unitary patent protection'. Below is the Dutch description, taken from page 20: